Geen punt joh, doe ik wel even.

Translation of parent post:

Look, I understand the sentiment. I honestly do. Even the suggestion to send our own strong men, though it is preposterous and you know it.

It just seems to me that the surest way to guarantee that this tragedy will just keep on escalating from what should be first and foremost about the victims and their families, is this rush to conclusions and consequences in this volatile geopolitical powder keg. Except, you know, with nukes.

What we know doesn't seem to amount to much yet, sadly, if we disregard the he said / she said.

Until evidence is presented, this is no more credible than the overwhelming evidence of WMD in Iraq and of Assad being behind the sarin attacks.

Likewise, not credible. They would say this anyway.

And this is also quite meaningless, as of now, because of the accuser is basically at war with the accused.

Incidentally I wonder if these militants are less pro-Russian than they are anti-Kiev (post coup).

Meanwhile, though, there are at least some relatively positive developments:

Absolutely agreed, which is why I wasn't supporting anyone.

I'm not insulted, though you are of course right not to care. One-line posts like "you're full of shit" don't exactly make you seem a reasonable commentator, which is why I don't care what you call me.

I'm not saying I'm Mr Reasonable either. But it is rather telling that you go around accusing people of being tools or "useful idiots" when those people aren't even stating any controversial opinion, but merely refuse to be drawn into a propaganda fest before any facts are in.

While, I might add, at the same time making various claims -- which may or may not turn out to be accurate -- but at any rate currently without a shred of evidence either way.

I despise Putin, but only slightly more than I despise the West's handling of this whole sordid affair. And that was even before this latest tragedy.

And why is that Pino (*)?

Unlike you, I don't go around insulting people for disagreeing with me. In short one-line posts with no further references or links or even hints at an argument. Just conclusions and accusations out of thin air.

I haven't actually said anything remarkable here: just throwing out there that, in my opinion, the current mud slinging back and forth only adds to the hurt of the people who've lost friends and family in this catastrophe. I know, because I live among those people.

And yet that gets modded Troll, and you're cheap shot is somehow deemed Insightful.

Sad.

(*) Not that you should care, but Pino is the dutch name for Big Bird.

That goes both ways, though, doesn't it? I don't think anybody has convincingly made any argument about what the separatists, much less Russia, has to gain from this tragic event.

As I've suggested above -- almost all these speculative accusations seems to emanate from one side or the other in a political/military dispute. Meanwhile the families of the casualties can't get closure, or even a credible account of what happened, because of all the propaganda flying back and forth.

Let's point fingers when we have at least some sense of direction.

I am from the Netherlands, where most of the casualties are from: can we PLEASE stop our uninformed finger pointing until at least some evidence turns up?

None of us know what happened.

Russia or the separatists in Eastern Ukraine might have done this -- although no-one is sure what they would stand to gain from it. Ukraine's own military might have done it (they've done it before and denied it vehemently until it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt).

For the moment though, we are doing the victims' families a shameful disservice by pretending to know what happened. Their loved ones are currently being cynically used, by both sides, as pawns in a game they had no part in.

Well, you did say you think the UN are "anti-Jewish" in the context of Israel. And I have had some discussions which turned out to be pointless and frustrating because some people pretend they can not distinguish between criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews.

Which is regrettably still not completely gone, as is racism generally, but I don't think it is the reason why the UN condemns some Israeli actions and policies. Well, the general assembly. There hasn't been a meaningful security council resolution for ages because the US veto everything. Check out the UN voting records, it is rather shocking how many resolutions have overwhelming majorities and a single US veto.

In the 80s, there were various resolutions against South Africa during their Apartheid years. Would you say this is a sign of "anti-white" bias on the part of the UN? Of course not, it is a just the majority opinion of the member states.

I'm not sure what you mean when you write "if they were occupying". They ARE an occupying force, I don't think that is controversial. Some argue that this occupation is justified, or that this is somehow a special kind of occupation that exempts Israel from the Geneva rules -- in particular the one that says you can't move your own population into occupied territories, or provide military and economic support to individuals who move in of their own accord. I, and the vast majority of the "international community" disagree.

I'm going to assume you mean "condemnation" rather than "commendation". There is no shortage of condemnation of Egypt. Not just over their handling of the Palestinian issue, but you might remember there was a military coup that ousted the democratically elected government they had after the revolution. I despise the Muslim Brotherhood, but they did win fair elections.

The coverage I've seen of this event in mainstream Western media was abysmal. "The building caught fire" was an oft read phrase, while there were crystal clear videos of goons throwing Molotov cocktails inside.

I have no love for the man, but it is utterly hypocritical of Washington to say Russia is "destabilizing Ukraine". Which is not to say that they aren't trying to influence the situation, militarily and politically, but let's not forget that it were Western forces that backed, funded, armed the coup in Kiev -- and in so doing supported some decidedly unsavoury types (Svoboda, Right Sektor).

What exactly do we expect the Russians to do here, given that a majority of the population in the Eastern Ukraine self-identify as Russian? How are they supposed to take seriously any diplomatic efforts on the part of the West? Even if we with our luxury induced attention span deficiency have forgotten, they probably remember a promise by Bush I and Baker that NATO wouldn't expand "as much as a thumb’s width further to the East".

I don't mind debating this with you here -- although I must admit to having taken us rather off topic -- but first we'll have to get one thing out of the way.

Do you accept that it is conceivable -- for reasons other than being "anti-jewish" -- to be critical of Israel's occupation of West Bank or their stranglehold on Gaza, and their treatment of the Palestinians in both the occupied territories and Israel proper?

Or are you of the opinion that any criticism of Israel is, somehow by definition, anti-semitic? (Disregarding, for a moment, the fact that Palestinians are Semites as well).

Because if that's the case, I don't see the point. And frankly I am not going to bother spending any effort toward convincing you I am not an anti-semite.

Of course it is despicable to hide weapons in a school, or any civilian premises for that matter. But it is no less despicable, in my book, for the Israelis to withhold information about those three murdered teens -- enforced by a gag order no less -- allowing tensions to rise to the point where a Palestinian boy was burned alive in "retribution".

Or to blame Hamas without presenting a shred of evidence. Or to start a murderous bombing campaign, and now an invasion more or less, on one of the most densely populated cities based on that unproven assumption. This is a deliberate strategy on the part of the IDF, and collective punishment is a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions.

I think Hamas' tactics are deplorable, but like it or not they have won elections that observers have qualified as fair and open. If we are truly committed to democracy then we can't make exceptions when we don't like the outcome. The fact that they enjoy popular support certainly doesn't justify making the population as a whole a target. This applies equally to rockets fired into Israeli civilian territory, of course. But the capacity of the IDF to inflict damage is orders of magnitude larger.

People living under an illegal occupation have the right to resist, I firmly believe that. In fact there was almost a UN resolution about terrorism, but it was vetoed by the US because the definition of terrorism in that proposal explicitly stated that those who suffer under racist regimes or illegal occupation have this right to resist. Palestine and South Africa were mentioned.

In stead, they are tainted (nay, funded) by the widespread corporate anti-science that big business inflict on the planet.

Uh-huh. And now (well, for some time already) we have courts agreeing with Fox et al that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.
link

So... Yeah, this is basically exactly the same issue as the FB "experiment" snafu a while back.

I thought a tend is supposed to be some overall direction in what is actually happening in the real world. Not what we would like to be happening.